Last night, we enjoyed Bible study with John and Pat (no, not two of the Catholic saints), Ivan and Mary, (no, not two of the most bloodthirsty dictators of the sixteenth century), and Tim (yes, Tim).

It was nice to hang out with some other believers for an evening and get a taste of some church community. It's one thing we've missed by being on the road all the time.

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Today, after doing a successful show in AGWSRCHS (no, I didn't just slip and fall on the keyboard. That stands for Ackley-Geneva-Wellsburg-Steamboat Rock Community High School), we bid a temporary farewell to our hosts, and drove about 45 minutes north to Hampton, Iowa. There, we met up with Darwin, a Youth-for-Christ staffer. We'll be doing shows for him for the next two days.

Since school wasn't quite out, Darwin wanted to take us to the two schools we'd be doing tomorrow to scout out the venues. So we did. We checked out the gyms (nothing out of the ordinary) and met the principals (really nice guys--they put the PAL in principal).

Darwin is himself a very nice guy. I think the best word to describe him is simply pleasant. He seems to always smile when he talks, and his tone is just very calm but animated. You walk away from his conversations smiling and you don't necessarily know why. We think we'll like working with him these next two days.

He put us up in the local Americ-Inn. That's a first for us! We've seen them around every once and a while, and they've looked nice, but we've never stayed in one.

And we're sure getting more than a taste now! Darwin told the manager what we're doing here, and she upgraded us to the whirlpool suite! Nice!

So we're here for two nights, and we have the rest of this night off. No work plans, not even any dinner plans. Darwin said we can just get whatever dinner we want, and save the receipts.